Saturday, August 11, 2018

Hello all, So yesterday a mystery bird https://terryboquetebirdstory.blogspot.com/2018/08/mysterious-hummingbird.html , now we are a step further. She is still here today, territory arguments with the rufous tailed Hummingbirds. Better video, you see she has a lot of brown in the back and forehead, no tail, so I think a Juvenile. Still doubts ...because a white throated Mountain Gem is according the book severe out of range, here it is 1250 meters altitude and acc. the book they are above the 1500 m. While the purple throated Mountain Gems can appear already between 600 to 1500 m... so still not a 100% ID

Friday, August 10, 2018

Hi Everyone... I did hear "upset" Hummingbirds in the garden and I was checking out what was going on. Then I did see a small orange bellied Hummingbird, very short tail. Grabbed my binoculars and did see a bright white supercilium,short straight beak.First I thought it was a female of a white throated Mountain Gem , maybe she lost her tail, but at the tip s of the tail I did see small white spot..also on the back... but a female of a magenta throated Woodstar...the supercilicum was too much...Stripe throated Hermit... this bird was too fast and active busy to feed for a Hermit. Hans did run inside , did grab the camera, it was already darker outside (6.30 pm...so it was hard to have good pictures.) The video turned out better. Hope I will find out which Hummingbird it is.... I think it is a new bird on our farm.

Sunday, August 5, 2018

Hello all, I have all kind of short stories to tell, so here they are.....

Story 1
It is August already..where is July? , my gosh! still there are birds active with nesting and feeding fresh fledged immatures... "our" stripe throated Hermit is sitting on a new nest. The old nest is still there...I have the impression she was rebuilding it , but I think she did stop with that and build a new nest on another spot half a meter away from the other nest. That is what I think...maybe there are two different stripe throated Hermits...
Anyway, she is now on the nest, amazing because it is next to the entrance of the great Tinamou cottage and there were all the time guest in this cottage. The hormones did win!
It's hard to take a picture, it's a very private place...

Story 2
A week ago I was with two birders in a more meadow area, watching birds and what I don't see often and for sure not taking a picture from was an eastern Meadowlark with a baby, they were getting food in the high grasses...and yes I have pictures to proof....cuteness!!

Story 3
Another day I was birding with a Dutch couple and they did not know before...but we figured it out they are birdwatchers, super! And he takes great pictures! I am allow to use his picture of the pair of scarlet thighed Dacnis that we did see that morning, female above the male ...what a great shot!

Story 4
And he did make a picture of a great Butterfly in El Valle (Panama), did ask me to ID...but well.... Butterflies I like them , but when I know all the birds, then I go into Butterflies... 😊😉 But our friend Dan , he is in birds and big time Butterflies and he did ID it! It's a Dusky-blue Groundstreak (Calycopis isobeon) Great story I like to share about this butterfly...

I
had a laugh about Dan's story of the moving of the hindwings,
because the Dutch couple told me that they were thinking that the Butterfly
was attacked by Ants, he did almost try to remove the" ants" , but
his wife did not let him , because she was afraid of "maybe they
will bite".

Then they did see the picture and figured out that they were not
ants, just a movement...now they know the whole story...
Here is Dan's story... This sp is in the
Lycaenidae family......... common name-- Hairstreaks. Almost
all of the many 100's of hairstreak species have those tiny 'tails' on the trailing
edge of the hindwings---- like this one has. When perched,
they rub the 2 hindwings together, and the tails move &
wave back-&-forth. Both the 'tails' -- the anatomical feature-- and the
'tails' being rubbed together-- a behavioral feature-- are
thought to have evolved as a way of attracting the attention of a
potential predator to a non-vital part of the bug-- the
wings & not the body.
If the individual is not
able to escape predation by movement, by flying away, the
predator will very often be visually attracted to
the movement, to the 'tails' moving/waving.
The tail can be 1/2 gone
and the butterfly can often still fly, thus mate (the adult
stage- the flying butterfly stage - is strictly the sexual or
reproduction stage, and just a small part of the entire life
cycle.). Should a predator hit the body, the predation effort
is usually successful-- the butterfly gets eaten. If the
predator hits the wing, often the butterfly escapes.
Thus........ it's not uncommon to see hairstreaks that no
longer have the portion of the wings where those 'tails' are
located.

There are a good # of
hairstreak sp's that live on/ near the ground... like this
one. That's why the photo shows it perching on grass. While
the great majority of hairstreak species are found
in forests-- with most of the 'rarest' (least known) living
high in the forest canopy, rarely coming near the ground---
the one in the photo is in a sub-family called Groundstreaks.

Common name of this
one-- Dusky-blue Groundstreak (Calycopis isobeon), one of the
most widespread--- from the tropics of S America to the
semi-tropics of south Texas. [Hairstreaks are almost entirely
found in the tropics--- with a worldwide distribution.]

My guess...... you've
seen this butterfly sub-family, Groundstreaks, 100's of
times--- very likely this same species, as it is one of the
more common ones. As forests get replaced with grasslands/
pasture, the groundstreaks experience habitat increase---
rather than habitat loss.
It's just like
with birds........ and so many life forms. If we take the
time, there is often beauty there. If we don't look, we don't
see.

Story 5
Hans and I crossed fingers for the nest and immatures in it from the rufous and white Wren pair. They were busy with building (took them 2 weeks) a nest in our spiny Palm tree in front of our balcony...but they did it in a dead palm leaf that was ready to fall down the tree. (I did see in my head already the disaster of sad babybirds on the ground)...But they made it...2 baby birds fledged and 4 days later the palm leaf did fell down!! Yess! Good timing!

Story 6
we did have some great mornings and afternoons weather wise and I did go a couple of times to different areas cloud forest... and of course did see the birds on our farm...
I took this video of the cloud forest on 1850 meters altitude... beautiful, I will never get use to that and yes we live here already 20 years! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgZpLTprwrM
Yesterday afternoon I did go to the wettest cloud forest in Boquete... you can see , this tree is so amazing .. lot of clouds there...lot of epiphytes

And yesterday loads of common Bush Tanagers (common Chlorospingus)
and immatures:

And so that was it...this morning a guest ask me if I could come and listen to the birds and tell him what we hear...he knows the birds big time in his country (USA), but here it's of course hard.
And so we had a short time , but I love that kind of things. Here is the list of this morning and I greet you all! Terryhttp://coffeeadventures.net/tinamou.html

Friday, July 20, 2018

Hello all, the 20th of July, Friday.
We are quite busy and so this morning I was ready for a little bit of birdwatching and so I did...my "birding dog Spot " was with me. I took it slow, a lot of birds... and clouds came in, so I was prepared to get wet, but then the man on a horse came by and he told me that it was not going to rain.
And he was right.
When I meet him, that happens quite often, he always tells me that there are a lot of birds...red...blue and green.😀 He is by the way 75 years old and live with his horse and lovely dog in the middle of nowhere.
After a half an hour, there was another man that I never did see before. He did ask me if I was hunting, if so..this was a wrong place to hunt, I have to go much deeper in the forest he said.
I did say that I was hunting but in another way. I did not eat the birds...but I spot them and then I am happy.
He looked at me with no opinion in his face...maybe in his mind...
Oh you are watching them...yes... I do.
I did ask him if he did some shopping and now going home?
Yes, he said, I live far away, have to walk still 11 hours.
I did ask him, what his age was... almost 91 years he said.
Shall I take a picture...I asked... yes please.... with my dog? ...yes please...my dog did like the man.

And I showed him the picture, it was good and he said, I have to go, hasta luego!

Sunday, July 1, 2018

This morning...in cloud forest Boquete Panama...these very young 3 wattled Bellbirds are already making their calls...they sound like adolescents(voices change) and you see on the video that they "shout" in each other ears, wauw they start early...